130,694 foreigners enrolled to vote in the municipal elections

According to figures released by the Federal Interior Ministry a total 130,649 non-Belgians had registered to vote in this October’s municipal elections by last Saturday. Voters had until Tuesday to register.

Wed 01 Aug 2018 13:48

The figures for the 2018 municipal elections show a fall of over 10,000 in the number of non-Belgians that are registered to vote compared with the last municipal elections in 2012 when 141,397 non-Belgians were registered. In the whole of Belgium 112,382 EU nationals and 18,267 non-EU nationals have registered to vote this time around. This is 15.03% and 9.37% respectively of those that were entitled to do so.

In 2012 120,826 EU-nationals (18.5% of the total number) and 20,571 non-EU nationals (14% of those entitled to do so) registered to vote.

The percentage of non-Belgians registering to vote was lower in Flanders than it was in Wallonia and the Greater Brussels Region. 29,338 EU nationals registered to vote in Flanders (10.1% of the total). The same was true of 6.23% of non-EU nationals that were entitled to do (5,313).

In Wallonia 23.46% of EU nationals have registered as have 10.59% of the non-EU citizens that were entitled to register. In Brussels was this 13.04% and 12.85% respectively.

The municipalities with the largest number of EU nationals registered are Elsene (Brussels) with 3,894, The City of Brussels with 3,709 and La Louvière (Hainaut) with 3,489.

Schaarbeek (Brussels) has the greatest number of non-EU nationals registered (1,846), followed by Brussels (1,423) and Antwerp (1,036).